Life Lessons from the SEAC: ‘Start Talking About the Value of Service’

Aug. 4, 2023 | By Jackson Triplett

Media influence and the lack of a “generational commitment” to public service are clouding the perceptions of many young Americans, Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Ramon Colon-Lopez said Aug. 1.

Nearing the end of a 33-year career spent as a special operator and senior enlisted leader in the Air Force, Colon-Lopez argued that service to one’s country offers intangible benefits young people would gravitate to—if they knew what they were.

“We are saturated in a highly negative environment,” Colon-Lopez said. “As a nation, we can help each other out and start talking about the value of service.”

The SEAC’s comments come amid polls showing declining public trust in the military and perceptions that the Department of Defense is becoming too politicized. Those perceptions appear to be taking a toll on recruiting, as the Army, Air Force, and Navy all expect to fall short of their recruitment goals for 2023.

With his retirement approaching fast in November, Colon-Lopez reflected on critical moments in his career, starting when, as a college freshman at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., he passed by a recruiting office and made a snap decision.

“I decided to just go ahead and make a U-turn, pull in, and go to a place where I could get some independence and discipline,” he said. Just one recruiter was in: an Airman.

“His name was Tech. Sgt. Derek Reason,” Colon-Lopez recalled. “This man was very genuine. He laid all the cards on the table. … I mean, he basically stood that ground so consistently, and the way he executed his duties was really what told me that I was in the right place.”

After joining the service, Colon-Lopez found a mentor in his first technical instructor who modeled the values that would become Colon-Lopez’s own personal pillars of leadership: intellect and humility.

“Another person that was very impactful in my career was my technical instructor, Staff Sgt. Tim Herrick. … He acted the part, he looked the part, and he was certainly the part,” Colon-Lopez said.

Exposure to that professional competence and Herrick’s “experiential credibility” had a deep impact on Colon-Lopez. “You need to be able to be smart enough to be able to think rationally through problems. And a lot of it is knowledge,” he noted.

However, to Colon-Lopez, that intellect and knowledge must be tempered by humility. His boot camp experience clued Colon-Lopez into the ethos of the “keen, quiet professional” that his instructors embodied.

“Get in the area, and get the experience,” he said. “You need to do things well to get that credibility. And once you have that credibility, don’t let it go to your head. Make sure that you stay humble throughout the process.”

To gain credibility and stay humble, Colon-Lopez cited the importance of another one of his “evergreen” leadership pillars: courage.

“Always put yourself out there and really test your capabilities to see what you’re capable of and what you’re not capable of,” he said.

In 1994, Colon-Lopez was serving in a logistics role at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. In his mind, though, he was ready for a different challenge.

“If I was going to be in the service, then I wanted to take the path of the warrior. And that is why, when the opportunity came up to me again, from another influential person in my career—Senior Master Sgt. Garry Lewry—he asked me if I ever thought about it.”

“It” was the opportunity to become an elite Pararescueman, or PJ.

“It’s the best decision I made in my life,” Colon-Lopez said.

Leaning on those leadership principles helped Colon-Lopez complete PJ training and advance in his career—but new challenges arose. Combat experiences left invisible marks on him and his brothers in arms.

“My spouse was noticing changes, especially after a prolonged exposure to combat,” Colon-Lopez recalled. However, his fear of appearing weak, and the culture surrounding it, held him back from seeking professional medical help.

It took a “series of missteps” to his family and career, as Colon-Lopez put it, to compel him to actually get help.

“It wasn’t until I finally got the help that I needed, that moment, that wake-up moment, that slap to the face … that said, ‘you know what, you should have done this about 15 years ago.’ And you should listen to other people again,” Colon-Lopez said. “And I felt the one thing that I hold most sacred, and that is humility. I let my ego [get in the way], because of the persona that I was supposed to live by, of a terrible warrior, that ‘we don’t get help, that help is for the weak.’ And boy was I wrong.”

Fast forward to today, and Colon-Lopez drew a connection between the military’s recruitment troubles and perceptions around mental health and the military. In a profession with the inherent risks of combat, young Americans are balking at what they perceive to be the costs of mental health that come from serving in the U.S. military, the SEAC said.

“They don’t want to be ‘broken,’” he said. “There seems to be a consistent drumbeat that says ‘combat time, too much combat, time away from home, alcoholism, PTSD, or suicide’” as a narrative for military careers.

But Colon-Lopez sees prospects getting brighter.

“We’re improving,” he said. “A lot of us have been pretty open on the things we got wrong, and that helps.”

The military has seen some small signs of progress in its suicide prevention efforts. The latest annual report noted a decline in suicide rates for the Active-Duty, Guard, and Reserve components, and preliminary data on 2022 showed the total numbers declining for the Guard and Reserve while staying basically steady for the Active-Duty.

Colon-Lopez hopes that greater service-wide engagement on the issue will continue to help “de-stigmatize certain things and create a better quality of life” for service members and their families, who are then better positioned to serve as ambassadors of the commitment of the U.S. military.

“I’ve always stated that we are our best recruiters,” said Colon-Lopez. “To be able to be exposed to someone that came from that same place that you came from, and open your eyes, that even though you may be living in this environment today, that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest of your life. Because you can have a way out.”

Colon-Lopez cited himself as a prime example of that.

“I have clearly experienced meritocracy for what it is,” he said. “You put in the work, you best your opponents, and you rise up to the occasion.”

Through that meritocracy, helped along by “evergreen” pillars, Colon-Lopez believes the U.S. military is still well-equipped to overcome the challenges facing the services today.

“The fix is for us to really tell the story of what service means to a lot of different people,” he said. “And I think it doesn’t necessarily need to come from the service members, but from people who have benefitted from our actions in different places.”

Fight for a Space National Guard Moves to Next Round

Aug. 3, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

When the Senate overwhelmingly passed its version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization bill late July 27 in a bipartisan 86-11 vote, the differences between that measure and the House version of the bill were left to a panel of conferees to resolve.

The House version passed largely on party lines, but the two versions must be reconciled and approved by both chambers before the bill can be signed into law.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) will be the primary drivers for the House; Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and ranking member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) have the lead for the Senate. But party leadership will also play a role in who gets to participate.

The conference committee must work out the differences and present a bill that can pass, identically, in both chambers. The House and Senate bills differ on dozens of issues, and time is short. Lawmakers have left town for the August recess and won’t return until September. Staffers have started the conference process in their absence, but with fewer than 20 working days in September, the two chambers are unlikely to pass a reconciled bill before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

Differences regarding the Space Force in need of resolution range from whether or not to form a Space National Guard to differences over required reports.

Space National Guard

For the Space Force, the biggest single issue to be resolved is one that Congress has punted several times in the past: How to solve the fact that units in the Air National Guard perform all their work for the Space Force, but are not statutorily connected to the new service. The matter has been debated for several years.

Proponents of forming a Space National Guard see it as the simplest solution. They say Air National Guard units with space missions are currently “orphaned” with no corresponding units in the Active-Duty Air Force. A Space National Guard can be put in effect inexpensively, they argue, with mostly cosmetic changes such as names on signs. The new organization would allow space professionals in the Air Guard to continue to serve both the Space Force and traditional Guard missions like natural disaster relief.

Critics counter that a Space National Guard adds unnecessary bureaucracy and would ultimately add millions of dollars in cost. They also say states have no specific missions for which military space forces are necessary, and that the Space Force should embrace a more innovative approach to personnel management.

Space Force leaders have largely stayed out of the debate, except to say the status quo, with space units in the Air National Guard, should not continue.

For the second straight year, the House approved the creation of a Space National Guard in its version of the NDAA. The Senate, on the other hand, included a provision which would require the Pentagon to contract with a federally-funded research and development center for an independent study of all three courses of action—space units staying in the Air National Guard, a Space National Guard, or folding everyone into the Space Force. The study would include cost-benefit analyses of each and would be due by Feb. 1, 2025.

This is not the first time Congress has directed a study of the issue—the 2022 NDAA also mandated an analysis of “the appropriate role and organization of space-related assets within the reserve components of the Armed Forces,” due by March 2022. That analysis was not independent, though—it was conducted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The results of that analysis were never publicly released, though Space Force leaders have since proposed the creation of a single hybrid component.

This year’s NDAA will likely take action on part of that proposal. Both the Senate and House versions contain lengthy sections establishing a single personnel management system for the Space Force. At its heart, the legislation would get rid of the idea of a “Regular Space Force” and a “regular reserve” and create a unified system consisting of full-time, part-time, and inactive Guardians. Those on active status who work full-time will be referred to as on “sustained duty,” while part-time personnel on active status will still need to either:

Participate in 48 drills or training periods and spend 14 days on active duty

Spend at least 30 days on active duty

Other Issues

Another major difference between the two bills is the future of a wideband communications satellite. Last year, Congress added $442 million for the satellite, but now the House wants to pump the brakes. Its bill would not be allowed USSF to issue a contract for WGS-12 until it certifies that “the primary payload for the WGS-12 satellite cannot be met by a commercial provider.” The bill would also prohibit any funds from being used to launch or operate WGS-12.

The Senate has no such provision.

The House bill also would require a number of studies and plans from the Space Force, including:

“A plan to expand existing threat-sharing arrangements with commercial space operators.”

A plan with “options for the integration of resilient military tactical satellite communications capabilities” into its force structure, including “a geostationary small satellite communications constellation.”

A process and a plan for evaluating and integrating commercial space situational awareness capabilities.

A report on the projected needs for national security space vehicle processing capabilities

A report and a plan for how the Space Force does and can use nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric propulsion space vehicles

The Senate bill contains far fewer requirements for reports and studies, but it does direct certain moves for the Space Force, including:

Directing the Space Development Agency to use the middle tier of acquisition authority to buy satellites for its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture

Establishing a principal military deputy for the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration

Designating the Department of the Air Force as responsible for space-based ground and airborne moving target indication systems

Both bills contain provisions touching on classification, an oft-mentioned issue with the Space Force. The House wants to require the service to review whether any space major defense acquisition program needs to be classified before it achieves Milestone B approval—needed to start the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. The Senate wants a briefing on the Space Force’s classification processes, particularly as they relate to combined space operations with key allies like Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Where and Why the Air Force Is Building 5 New Child Development Centers

Aug. 3, 2023 | By David Roza

Good news for Air Force families: The service is building five new child development centers (CDCs) to address unmet demands across the branch. The Air Force also rolled out new child care staffing incentives last October, which may have played a role in a recent five percent bump in staffing levels at CDCs.

Air Force spokesperson Laurel Falls told Air & Space Forces Magazine the five new facilities include:

A CDC at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas (under construction)

A combination CDC/School Age Care facility at Osan Air Base, South Korea (under construction)

Two CDCs at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas (designed and awaiting construction award)

A CDC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio (designed and awaiting construction award)

When asked why those locations were chosen for new facilities, Falls said installations and Air Force major commands submit child and youth facility projects for consideration every year to address emerging needs and facility conditions. The choices were also influenced by a Child Care Capacity Initiative Cross-Functional Working Group which formed in July 2019 to analyze and propose solutions for child care challenges.

The group studied unmet child care demand across the service and came up with a prioritized list of child care facility projects that “was developed based on analysis of facility conditions and child care capacity shortages across the enterprise,” Falls said. The 2019 working group materials were internal planning documents and are not releasable, she added.

Child development centers provide child care services for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, while school age care facilities take care of children from the start of kindergarten through the end of the summer after seventh grade, according to the Department of Defense.

Building and staffing enough CDCs to meet demand is an ongoing issue for the Air Force and the rest of the military. Parents often work odd hours in remote locations where private day care may be unavailable, overbooked, or prohibitively expensive.

“We have about an 18 percent capacity on base to take care of children that are within the age of going to childcare or school,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne S. Bass said in 2020. At the time, Bass called for building a network of options to fill that gap.

“If we don’t have that capacity on base, which, that is a separate line item that we have got to address and get after, then we’ve got to build the networks in the communities [so] that we have childcare options for families,” she said. “It is extremely hard for our single parents and dual working parents … to be able to get after that.”

Three years later, senior service leaders say building child care capacity is still top on their minds. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall mentioned the five new facilities in June during a discussion about the all-volunteer force hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

“We’re doing a lot on the people side here, and on that list for people who are serving, child care comes very high on the list,” Kendall said, adding that housing, mental health care, and education are also priorities.

“We’re trying to get at all of those but I would put child care pretty high,” he said.

Staffing child care facilities is the biggest problem in the child care space and one that civilian parents also face, Kendall said. On the military side, the problem is exacerbated by service members’ irregular hours, especially when both parents are in uniform.

New incentives may be helping attract more talent. Starting last October, Air Force Child Development Program direct-care employees began receiving a 100 percent childcare fee waiver for their first child enrolled in an installation child development program, and a 25 percent discount for all additional children. Other child and youth program employees, such as receptionists, custodial staff, and cooks, are eligible for a 25 percent discount for each child enrolled in installation programs.

The incentives were meant to recruit and retain child care staff, and they may be making an impact: direct-care staffing level increased from 72 percent on Oct. 1, 2022 to 77 percent on June 1, 2023, Falls said.

Though it is unclear how much of that bump can be directly attributed to the new incentives, Falls reported a rise in the number of direct-care staff using the child care discount. In December 2022, 23 percent of CDC direct care staff were using the child care fee discount and in March 2023, 27 percent were using the discount, she said.

When asked if the five new centers have met their staffing goals, the spokesperson said both the new facilities at Osan and Sheppard are replacement CDCs where existing staff will transition to the new buildings, while recruitment of staff for the new CDCs in Ohio and Joint Base San Antonio will begin about 90 days before they open. The Osan project is due to finish in fiscal year 2024 and the Sheppard CDC in fiscal year 2025, but the three other project timelines will not be developed until after the construction awards are granted.

In the meantime, Kendall said in June that the Air Force is also trying to promote family child care, where certified individuals provide child care for infants through school-age children in their homes, by “giving people licenses to be able to do that and making sure compensation is adequate.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III “made taking care of people one of the themes of his tenure,” Kendall added. “It’s a continuing effort to improve the quality of life of our people.”

Northrop Grumman Opens New Hypersonic Propulsion Facility in Maryland

Aug. 3, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

Northrop Grumman opened its new hypersonic propulsion factory in Elkton, Md., August 3, where it will build scramjet engines for the Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile as well as ramjets, warheads, and other components for future hypersonic systems.

The 60,000-square-foot “Hypersonic Capability Center” employs just over 50 people now in digital and production work, but Northrop designed the facility to be “rapidly expandable” and reconfigurable to increase manufacturing capacity for HACM and accommodate other projects. Northrop’s aim: to build hypersonic elements “at scale,” company officials said.

Northrop provides the air-breathing scramjet propulsion system and warheads for HACM to its prime contractor, Raytheon. The team won a cost-plus development contract for the weapon in September, 2022. The initial asset is expected circa 2027.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said USAF switched its “focus” to HACM as its primary hypersonics effort after the AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) failed to impress in early testing. HACM’s smaller size and longer range—thanks to its air-breathing scramjet propulsion—makes it more attractive for the Air Force, Kendall and Andrew Hunter, his chief acquisition executive, have said. The smaller weapon can be carried by fighers, as well as big bombers like the B-52.

The HACM is based on development work done led by the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, building on the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) and work Raytheon did in a joint program with Australia called SCIFiRE, for Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiments. Initial HACM flight tests are expected to be conducted in Australia.

Raytheon’s version of HAWC flew successfully in September 2021 and July 2022.

The HACM is “obviously a key and critical program for us,” said Chris Haynes, Northop director of business development for missiles.

The HCC, he said, “is going to be a combination of modern equipment, as well as leveraging digital engineering techniques…We’re really trying to drive” having engineers work “side by side with operations, fully integrated on the floor. So as we’re making design decisions, we understand the implications of those decisions as it relates to…delivering weapons that are reliable, affordable and at scale,” Haynes said.

The design of future weapons will have to take manufacturing into account at the outset, in order to hit the price points government is willing to pay, he said.

The facility is “purpose-built…for design, development and manufacturing of hypersonic air breathing propulsion, all under one roof,” he said. There is no capability to build hypersonic propulsion systems “at scale in the industry today,” Haynes said. The “foundational elements” of such a capability don’t exist at the scale that they do for solid rocket motors, he said.

Ground was broken on the HCC in 2021. The new facility consolidates some of Northrop’s engineering talent from its Ronkonkoma, N.Y., and Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., facilities to concentrate the company’s critical mass of hypersonic expertise.

Haynes noted more than five active hypersonic programs among the Army, Navy, and Air Force and said the company expects the number of programs and the number of deliverables to increase substantially.

“As an industry leader on the components and missile side of things, we’re obviously well positioned to play a critical role in developing these new systems from the propulsion perspective, from a fusing perspective; warheads, advanced materials; they’re all critical to delivering this capability,” he said. The underlying goal is “affordable mass.”

Northrop’s provides HACM’s scramjet, solid rocket motors, and fusing capabilities, while Raytheon provides control actuation, forward section electronics, and endgame sensors, Haynes said. The weapon will be delivered out of Raytheon’s facilities in Tucson, Ariz.

Haynes said the two companies “fully integrated” their efforts through digital thread and integrated networks across the whole of the HACM effort.

“We are able…to collaborate [in] real time with our partners, with our supply chain, to be able to make design decisions [and] make manufacturing decisions,” Haynes said.

Haynes said Northrop also will build hypersonic engines for “future air-breathing systems,” but did not elaborate. Elkton will also produce the third stage rocket motor for the Navy’s Standard Missile, another Raytheon product.

Jones also said that Northrop is partnering with “local high schools and universities and colleges to create programs dedicated towards building a trained skill set within the community. So we have a workforce of the future, essentially.” Elkton is about 8 miles from the University of Delaware, just over the state line in Newark, Del.

Niger Coup Could Jeopardize US Counterterrorism Operations in Africa

Aug. 2, 2023 | By Chris Gordon

The toppling of the democratically-elected president of Niger on July 26 is jeopardizing U.S. counterterrorism missions in much of Africa and raising questions about America’s ability to carry out military operations in that region.

The U.S. and France have condemned the military’s power grab, led by Abdourahamane Tchiani, Niger’s new self-proclaimed leader. A group of West African nations on July 30 imposed sanctions and even threatened force if President Mohammad Bazoum is not restored to power.

Yet there are no signs that the military junta that seized control is backing down, and concerns have grown that Russia might try to take advantage of the upheaval.

“If Western operations are significantly impacted by this, it’s going to be bad for the Nigerien people,” retired Army Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, who led U.S. Africa Command from 2019-2022, told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “It’s going to be bad for the region. It’s going to be bad for Europe before it’s bad for America, but it’s going to be bad for everybody.”

For now, the U.S. has halted security cooperation with Niger while American personnel are largely staying on their bases, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder told reporters Aug 1.

“We continue to stay in contact with the Niger military, but in terms of training, for example, those types of things, that’s been suspended,” said Ryder, who declined to say whether U.S. drone operations had stopped.

Taking a wait-and-see approach, the Biden administration has not officially declared the removal of Bazoum a coup, which would require the U.S. to cut off military assistance under U.S. law, undermining efforts to combat terrorism in the area. The U.S. says it still holds out hope that Bazoum could be restored to power and U.S. officials and analysts said the situation on the ground is still unfolding.

“Currently, the position of Gen. Tchiani is fragile because he is torn between different political and military actors within the CNSP itself,” said Tatiana Smirnova, an expert on Niger at the University of Quebec in Montreal, referring to the junta’s formal name, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland.

The U.S. has roughly 1,100 troops in Niger, where the U.S. military operates two air bases. That has enabled the U.S. to fly drones, such as Air Force MQ-9s, to gather intelligence on militant groups in the region, including al-Qaeda, ISIS affiliates, and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a terrorist group active in Niger and other parts of West Africa. In 2017, four American service members were killed while hunting for an ISIS leader.

“We don’t want this to be something like Afghanistan,” an Air Force officer serving in Niger told Air & Space Forces Magazine in 2022.

John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, told reporters Aug. 1 that “there’s no indication that Russia was behind this” despite Russian flags being seen being displayed in Niger’s capital.

But Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary Wagner group Wagner, hailed the coup in a Telegram message and suggested his troops would help Niger maintain order.

“The Niger coup is condemnable enough in its own right, but other West African states and Western governments should be particularly worried given the recent history of regime change in the violence-plagued Sahel,” wrote James Barnett, a Hudson Institute research fellow who is based in Lagos, Nigeria. “In both Mali and Burkina Faso, coups in 2021 and 2022, respectively, were followed by a further rise in jihadist violence, geopolitical spats between the juntas and their traditional Western security partners, and, in the case of Mali, the arrival of the Wagner Group.”

Smirnova said there may not be overwhelming pro-Russian support among the general public, but noted that anti-Western sentiment runs strong while there is “general fatigue” with the current government among the population.

“Russian flags in the streets of Niamey do not necessarily mean that there are pro-Russian sentiments in the country, while anti-Western sentiments have been persisting for some time already,” Smirnova told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“People are tired of not-equitable distribution of resources,” she added. “All that may explain why so many political actors do not condemn the coup now.”

France, Italy, and other European countries have moved to evacuate their citizens, a step the U.S. had not yet taken. On Aug. 2, the U.S. State Department announced the partial evacuation of U.S. government personnel and their family members. But for now, the U.S. military is staying.

“There are no changes to the U.S. military force posture in Niger during the Department of State-led ordered departure,” Ryder said in an Aug. 3 statement. “The Department of State has not requested DOD personnel or equipment as part of the ordered departure. We continue to monitor this fluid and evolving situation and reiterate our focus on a diplomatic solution.”

As yet, a diplomatic solution remains elusive.

“Military coups are deeply ingrained in their history there, so I think it was always not far beneath the surface,” said Townsend. “I’m very disappointed, but I’m not shocked by what happened in Niger.”

Editor’s note: this article was updated on Aug. 3 with additional comments from Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder.

Here’s What Units Will Move to Davis-Monthan to Join AFSOC’s New Power Projection Wing

Aug. 2, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force unveiled plans for the new 492nd Power Projection Wing that will replace the A-10 mission at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., on Aug. 2, describing for the first time which units will be included.

The new wing will be part of Air Force Special Operations Command and draw units from around the country. The 492nd Special Operations Wing will be re-missioned and re-designated, providing the headquarters element; it will relocate to Arizona from Hurlburt Field, Fla., where it is has led AFSOC’s training and education efforts.

The 492nd will be AFSOC’s third Power Projection Wing, but the Air Force did not immediately say what other wings will get that designation. The new term is meant to encompass all of AFSOC’s mission capabilities—strike, mobility, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and air/ground coordination—so the command can “regionally focus each power projection wing on a geographic combatant commander,” according to a release.

“The transition will also allow AFSOC to further diversify its locations to protect against natural disasters by ensuring it can maintain its ability to respond to president-directed missions on very tight timelines,” the release stated.

Units coming to Davis-Monthan include:

One MC-130J Commando II squadron from Cannon Air Force Base, N.M.

One AO-1K Armed Overwatch squadron from Hurlburt Field, Fla.,

The 21st Special Tactics Squadron from Pope Army Airfield, N.C.

The 22nd Special Tactics Squadron from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

The 492nd Theater Air Operations Squadron will activate at Duke Field, Fla., and transfer

The AT-802U Sky Warden aircraft can be easily broken down and reassembled for transport. **Air Tractor AT-802U/Twitter**

Davis-Monthan is losing most of its A-10 Thunderbolts, as three squadrons inactivate and send their 78 A-10s to the boneyard:

The 47th Fighter Squadron

The 354th Fighter Squadron

The 357th Fighter Squadron

In addition to the 492nd PPW, Davis-Monthan will also gain five HH-60W helicopters from the 34th Weapons Squadron and 88th Test and Evaluation Squadron, which will relocate from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev..

The moves will occur slowly over five years and pending an environmental impact analysis.

The Air Force first revealed plans for the 492nd Power Projection Wing in its 2024 budget documents, and Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. provided further details during a congressional hearing in April.

“Their access to the ranges that are there in Arizona and in the western United States will increase their training opportunity,” Brown said.

For years, Arizona lawmakers in Congress have been some of the fiercest advocates for the A-10, repeatedly blocking Air Force attempts to retire the venerable close air support aircraft. The arrival of the 492nd and other missions, however, has seemingly softened that opposition.

This spring, Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), along with Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), released a joint letter saying they were “encouraged by the Air Force’s intention to bring new, durable flying missions” to Davis-Monthan, noting that the base’s population will hold steady at roughly 9,600 Airmen and civilians.

U.S. Air Force Airmen inspect an A-10 Thunderbolt II from the 924th Fighter Group during the 355th Maintenance Group’s 4th quarter crew chief competition at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., Jan. 6, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Paige Weldon

Air Force Propulsion Czar: NGAD Engines Will Have Different Size, Similar Tech to AETP

Aug. 2, 2023 | By John A. Tirpak

DAYTON, Ohio—The engines for the hyper-secret Next Generation Air Dominance fighter will be a different size than the adaptive engines developed for an F-35 upgrade, but many of the technologies will “port over” to the new powerplant, the Air Force’s propulsion czar told reporters Aug. 1.

John R. Sneden, propulsion director for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, also said the Air Force plans to keep both GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney in the prototyping phase for the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) engine which will power NGAD, after the two engine-makers participated in the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) meant for the F-35.

“The engines that we developed for AETP were sized for the F-35,” said Sneden. “Those that will go into NGAD are different engines; they will be differently-sized engines. But the technology baseline … is essentially the same.”

Asked later if the NGAP engines will be larger than the AETP ones, Sneden said through a spokesperson that, “as with any new weapon system development, the NGAP propulsion systems will be sized appropriately to meet thrust, weight, and other integration requirements.”

There has been a steady increase in the size of fighter powerplants from the F100 of the 1970s to the the F135 of the 2000s—the F100’s fan diameter was just 34.8 inches, compared to 43 inches for F135. AETP is even larger, at 46 inches.

The AETP engines—Pratt’s XA100 and GE’s XA101—were developed with the F-35 in mind, but the Pentagon opted to forego the program in its fiscal year 2024 budget request. While they fit in the F-35A, the engines would need a redesign to fit the carrier-capable F-35C and short takeoff/vertical landing F-35B. Instead, the services have opted for the F135 Engine Core Upgrade offered by Pratt & Whitney. The ECU can apply to all F-35 variants.

But while the AETP engines will not be used in the F-35, Sneden argued the technology they helped develop is “critical” to NGAD and necessary for ensuring the U.S. maintains its advantage in propulsion over China.

According to officials, the AETP engines offer double-digit gains in both specific thrust and fuel efficiency. Sneden said the program also developed next technologies like advanced materials and composites, ceramic matrix materials, thermal management improvements, and additive manufacturing which collectively will deliver the increased capabilities the NGAD will need.

As a result, those advancements won’t be “lost … or wasted,” he said. “It just gets incorporated into a design that’s critical for the NGAP system.”

While the Air Force has said it is ready to move on from AETP, some lawmakers are not—the House approved funding to resurrect the program in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, while the Senate did not. Both chambers agreed to fund the Air Force’s request of nearly $600 million for NGAP.

Asked if AETP could be put on hold and developed for the F-35 at some future point, Sneden demurred.

“Our current focus right now is just to get the technology to a logical transition point” for NGAP, he said.

In order to have both the best choice for NGAP and to sustain what he has described for two years now as a fragile propulsion industrial base, both GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney will likely be carried into a prototyping phase, he said.

“With the way we’re funded, we think we can carry both through prototype, and both are leaning in fully,” Sneden said. “And so then we’ll [contract for] the prototype” and carry out a test and evaluation program. That could continue until a winner is chosen, unless one is an early and clearly superior performer, he said.

“We still have that opportunity to do a downselect if we start seeing … huge separation between the two,” he said. Previous plans had called for choosing one company to develop NGAP based on proposals alone, without a competitive prototyping effort.

While Sneden would not provide a timeline for NGAP, he did say the program is undergoing “detailed design activities right now. And within the next couple of years, we’ll be moving into prototyping testing.”

Asked why traditional airframers Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman received NGAD propulsion contracts last year—in addition to awards to GE and Pratt—Sneden said it was to ensure “that there was an interface methodology between the airframe company and the propulsion company.”

Northrop recently said it would not bid on NGAD.

The Air Force will settle on one design that will fit any of the NGAD designs, Sneden said. After selecting one engine and one air frame, “there could be some optimization of that system and that particular design.” But all the companies are observing “the propulsion constraints that we’ve studied, and evaluated, and provided to each,” he added.

Industrial Base

Given the limited number of contractors working in advanced propulsion, Sneden said his team is focused on maintaining the industrial base and bolstering U.S. advantages in the space. That means “competition, wherever possible, and continuing to fund both vendors for as long as we possibly can.”

NGAP in particular is critical to the U.S., Sneden argued, because of advancements China is making in the arena that threaten U.S. dominance. It’s a warning he issued last year as well.

“Through intellectual property theft, working with Russia, and frankly, just their own development, activity and budget … they’ve made significant leaps and bounds over this last roughly eight-plus years,” he observed.

With greater investment in propulsion, China has closed the gap to the U.S., Sneden said.

“Our focus is not letting them do that,” and he said the adaptive engine technology “is the right way, and incorporating into the NGAD system is our assurance of long-term air dominance and propulsion superiority.”

Surveying the state of the American engine industrial base, Sneden said the current process takes too long and cannot respond to threats fast enough.

“In fairness to my industry partners, they haven’t really been challenged or incentivized through the majority of our contracts,” Sneden said. “The sole-source nature of our enterprise also exacerbates that same problem by removing some of those competitive forces that drive innovation, speed and cost control.”

USAF Will Retire the U-2 in 2026. Until Then, Expect ‘Unique, Innovative’ Uses

Aug. 2, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

DAYTON, Ohio—The Air Force plans to retire its U-2 Dragon Lady fleet in fiscal 2026—but until then, officials say they’re hard at work to keep the iconic high-altitude surveillance planes flying and testing out technology that may be used on future aircraft.

The plan to divest the U-2 was first reported by Aviation Week and Air Force Times, citing a line tucked into Air Force budget documents that “expectations are for protective NDAA language to be waived … allowing the USAF to move forward with U-2 divestment in FY 2026.”

Col. William Collins, senior materiel leader for high-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, confirmed the plan to reporters at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference on Aug. 1—the first official Air Force comment on the future of the U-2 since the plan emerged.

“Our focus right now is working with [Air Combat Command] to maintain full viability of the plane through the service life, maintaining as much trade space for senior leaders,” Collins told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “We are working toward the Air Force’s position to the best of our ability. But what we’re doing predominantly is focusing on how we ensure that we don’t create a scenario in which we’re not able to meet mission need because of things like obsolescence.”

While the orginial U-2 first flew in 1955, the current aircraft date back to the 1980s, with the final one delivered in 1989. That was followed by an upgrade in the early 1990s. But the fleet’s average age is now nearly 40 years old, and the Air Force faces diminishing manufacturing sources for key parts, Collins said.

Still, the U-2 remains unique in the Air Force inventory as the service’s only manned high-altitude ISR platform. An icon of the Cold War era, the Dragon Lady returned to headlines earlier this year when one flew over the Chinese surveillance balloon transiting the continental U.S. The Pentagon subsequently released an image from the U-2 cockpit showing the balloon.

With the ability to fly at altitudes in excess of 70,000 feet, demand from combatant commanders continues, Collins said, so the Air Force wants to keep the fleet in flying shape into 2026. USAF asked for $16.8 million in research and development, $54.7 million in procurement, and $17 million in operations and maintenance to the U-2 in fiscal 2024.

The aircraft’s uses also aren’t limited solely to ISR, said Col. Joshua Williams, program executive officer for ISR and special operations forces.

“We’re using U-2 in unique and innovative ways and as a surrogate platform, decreasing risk for our fifth-gen fighters,” said Williams. “All we’re doing is decreasing risk and increasing the technical mature for stuff we’ll use on the F-35, F-22.

According to budget documents, that “stuff” includes sensors and capabilities related to the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System and the Pentagon’s broader Joint All-Domain Command and Control effort.

“What we’re focused on is a code-compliant processor capability that provides open mission systems, so that we can bear out that ability to be leveraged on fifth-gen, sixth-gen platforms,” Collins said. “We’re also looking at demoing some [signals intelligence] capability that can also be potentially used on future platforms.”

In addition to buying down risk and freeing up fighters like the F-35 and F-22, using the U-2 as a surrogate has another benefit.

“We’re focusing on showing that as we develop future capability, not only are we doing the survivability, but also the ability to plug and play sensors, not being platform-specific, but platform agnostic,” Collins said.

Particularly for ABMS, Air Force leaders have stressed the importance of sensors being able to fit into a broader architecture.

But while the U-2 may benefit sixth-generation platforms and ABMS by testing out future tech, the Air Force’s plans for its main mission of high-altitude ISR are changing fundamentally, as well. The service’s other high-altitude ISR platform, the RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, is slated to be retired in 2027, a year after the sunset of the U-2 fleet.

“There’s going to be a lot more space involved,” Williams said. “Especially in the contested environments the U-2 and these platforms fly in, it’s a different problem and a different answer.”

Cropsey Wants to Keep Things Simple: ‘Complexity … Is Going to Kill Us‘

Aug. 1, 2023 | By Greg Hadley

DAYTON, Ohio—With a striking story and four basic guidelines, the Air Force’s command, control, communications, and battle management czar Brig. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey laid out his priorities for industry at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference on Aug. 1.

Cropsey, the Department of the Air Force’s integrating program executive officer for C3BM, is responsible for coordinating the department’s drive to connect sensors and shooters and the ambitious Advanced Battle Management System. The many elements will form the “DAF Battle Network,” the department’s contribution to enabling joint all-domain command and control.

Service Secretary Frank Kendall has called Cropsey’s job “the hardest acquisition job I’ve ever given anybody”—unsurprising given the technological and logistical complexity of integrating every kill chain as some have envisioned ABMS doing. Having spent his first six months setting a course, Cropsey is now out preaching his gospel, in this case an audience of industry and Air Force leaders. His focus, he said, is in making this concept work, not connecting everything.

To convey the idea, Cropsey reflected on his childhood in Africa, where his father was a surgeon. One day, his father asked him to bring a drill, a bit, and a medical textbook to the operating room.

“A patient had come in who had been hit by a car on his bike and had a massive head contusion,” Cropsey said. “And in the process of diagnosing this guy, he went through the basic diagnostics around what happens when you have a bleed on your brain, and this guy had all the symptoms. But he didn’t have any of the sophisticated diagnostic equipment that you would expect here in the States to tell him this is exactly what was going on. So he needed the book from his med school days to try to figure out some basic things about where this guy might actually be bleeding out of his brain.

“And then he needed the drill and the bit, because the only way to relieve that pressure was to literally drill a hole in this guy’s head.”

As his father did then, so Cropsey now faces his own extremely complex problem—one that does not hold a single life in the balance, but that nevertheless demands immediate action.

“Complexity in this space is a lot like that brain bleed … It’s going to kill us if we don’t figure out how right now we are going to deal with it, and we have to deal with it effectively,” Cropsey said. “But quite frankly, we don’t have time to go into all the nuances here. We’ve got to get down to the simple.”

Cropsey has spoken in the past of not wanting to “boil the ocean” when it comes to his job—trying to take on too much and being doomed to fail. Instead, he emphasized that starting simply is necessary to build progress. That extends even to the long-standing idea that ABMS must “integrate everything.”

“This has to get down to the details about how you’re actually going to do that mission,” Cropsey said. “How that mission is going to play out in terms of how you see the flow, the assets that you have available to do it, and the way that they’re going to be connected. When you do that, and you get down to the specifics, you find out that actually, you don’t have to have everything, everywhere connected. You don’t have to know where all the data is all the time, everywhere.”

Instead, Cropsey said he is following four basic principles as he presses ahead:

“Alignment around the operational outcomes we want to achieve.” Echoing Kendall’s push for operationally-focused ABMS, Cropsey said any offering from industry must meet a specific operational need.

“We do C2, we do all C2, and we don’t do any more than C2.” While Cropsey wants any solution he identifies to be scalable across the entire Air Force, he warned that getting away from command and control would cause the entire effort to “collapse” under its own weight.

“Architecture wins over products.” Given the desire to connect sensors and shooters, Cropsey said he favors contractors and products that can easily connect with the overarching system. “In order to win the long term, you actually have to have an architecture that’s relatively agnostic to the individual nodes or agents that you have in that architecture,” he said.

“Capability has to be continuously deployed over time.” Cropsey said he will push programs to produce and field viable capabilities, then iterate on them quickly—a model more like commercial software development than conventional military acquisition. “I’m pushing my team for quarterly deliverables,” Cropsey said. “Something needs to come out the door every quarter—what are we developing this for? Who is it getting delivered to? How are we making it better? I’m front-loaded to do 90-day sprints.”

Emphasizing rapid, continuous development echoes the approach championed by the Space Development Agency under Director Derek M. Tournear. Indeed, meeting with reporters after his keynote, Cropsey said he and Tournear speak regularly about their mutual pursuit of innovation.

“We are absolutely synched up with other aspects of the organization that have like-minded, similar perspectives,” Cropsey said. “We’re swapping stories all the time about what works and what doesn’t work.”

Just as SDA recently notched a major success with the first launch of its Tranche 0 satellites, Cropsey also shared progress his team is making.

At the unclassified level, Cropsey said, the Air Force has made progress on some lines of effort related to ABMS. For example, the KC-46 will get a palletized communications system that will allow it to better process incoming data and communications shared by other aircraft, and NORAD has received its first “minimally viable product,” ABMS cloud-based command and control.

Cropsey also hinted at progress in the classified arena on integrated kill chains. “In my quarterly update with SECAF [Kendall] in June, we actually gave him our first analysis around what that initial architecture would look like for this specific operational problem,” Cropsey said. He promised details in a classified briefing this fall.